In Between
by megannkb
Summary: Some moments in between those shown in the show, told from the perspectives of different characters.


She pretends that she doesn't like me. Her sentences are always weighted heavily with sarcasm, and sometimes I'm convinced that she genuinely hates me, but then I show up again the next day and she lets me into the practice room all over again.

She said nothing today, not moving over to the piano, not moving from the blue plastic chair that she had been perched on after letting me in. Her hair looked nice, the mass of curls pulled into a ponytail at the back of her neck.

"Hey," I said, putting my backpack down in another chair. "What's up?"

"My mom has another stupid doctor's appointment." She replied miserably, kicking at the chair in front of her. "I don't have a ride home. "

"Well," I said, struggling to find something to make her feel better, but coming up empty-handed. I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly. "We can, um, stay here, I guess." I could tell she didn't want to go home, but I wasn't entirely sure she wanted to stay here either.

The silence hung heavily in the room. I moved over to the piano, sat on the wooden bench, and plunked out a tune, trying to calm my nerves. The joint I had smoked just after school was doing little to help them.

She dropped both feet to the ground, coming to stand next to the piano.

"Where did you learn that?" She asked, for the first time in perhaps all the days we'd spent here, trying to show some interest. _She must need a friend pretty damn badly_, I thought, and mentally kicked myself for being so cynical. Maybe she was just finally warming up to me. Maybe.

"I…didn't. I mean, no one taught it to me. I just play whatever, um, comes to mind, I guess." Smooth.

"So all you play is jazz?" It seemed impossible for her to wrap her head around someone playing the piano for any reason other than for organization and practice – maybe almost as impossible as it was for me to imagine being that structured, all the time.

"Well…I play whatever I feel like." I paused, lifting my hands off of the keyboard. She had let her walls down a little, and I wanted to take in what I could while I could. "Why, don't you ever play anything other than what you're supposed to?"

"No. Never." She said quickly, and then a small smile flashed across her lips when she realized how strict she truly sounded.

For my part, I was happy to have inadvertently gotten a smile out of her. It was a striking difference, changing her whole face. It was a pretty face, even more so when she wasn't looking inward. I realized with a little shock that I was gawking. To avoid staring at her, I began to play again, focusing on the keys.

"See, the thing about jazz is, how do you know if you got it right? It's just making shit up." She added.

"Which is also known as the act of creation?" I didn't want to argue with her, I just wanted her to loosen up a little. Enjoy life a little more. Maybe then I would get to see more of that smile that had played across her lips seconds before; the one that lit up her whole face and took all the air out of a room.

"Oh, you're one of those pretentious stoner types," she said sarcastically, and her walls were back in place. Dammit.

"That's totally unfair. I'm not pretentious." My nerves were getting the better of me again as I realized I was back where I had started, and her words took me a moment to process. I let out a sudden laugh as I realized that I had no argument for the second part of her description.

I wanted to get back on track, see if I could get that smile out of her again. "And I'm definitely _not_ classical. It's so rigid and structured. There's no room for improvisation. You have to play the notes on the page."

"Yeah, and what did Mozart know anyway? He should have just smoked a bowl and jammed on 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.'" She said, twice as sarcastically as the first.

"Yeah, let's do that." I said enthusiastically before I could fully think through what I was saying.

She rolled her eyes, but I think she softened a little bit. Just a little.


End file.
